The occasional
appearance of the feather-plumed Indian in his sylph-like canoe, or the
flapping of a covey of wild-fowl, frightened by the rushing sound of a
steamboat, with the quick pulsation of its paddle-strokes on the water,
but served to heighten the interest, and to cast a kind of fairy spell
over the prospect, particularly as, half shrouded in mist, we passed
among the green islands and brown rocks, fringed with fir trees, which
constituted a perfect panorama as we entered and ascended the Straits of
the St. Mary's.
We sat down to our Fourth-of-July dinner on board the Superior, a little
above the Thunder Bay Islands, in Lake Huron, and as we neared the once
sacred island of Michilimackinack, and saw its tall cliffs start up, as
it were by magic, from the clear bosom of the pellucid lake, a true
aboriginal, whose fancy had been well imbued with the poetic mythology
of his nation, might have supposed he was now, indeed, approaching his
fondly-cherished "Island of the Blest." Apart from its picturesque
loveliness, we found it, however, a very flesh and blood and
matter-of-fact sort of place, and having taken a pilot on board, who
knew the sinuosities of the Saint Mary's channel, we veered around, the
next day, and steered into the capes of that expanded and intricate
strait, where we finally anchored on the morning denoted, and where the
whole detachment was quickly put under orders to ascend the river the
remainder of the distance, about fifteen miles, in boats, each company
under its own officers, while the colonel pushed forward in the yawl.
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